HELLO MY FELLOW TRANSMISSONIANS

It's the 85th episode of the Roboplastic Podcastalypse! Well, no, it's actually episode 123 of TransMissions Podcast but I'm all over it and it's pretty much the same thing!

BONUS! Also check out the 22 minute video segment recorded during this episode featuring me NOT wearing a cardboard robot costume (for once).

Botconocalypse 2010 Saturday: The Radio Free (and sleep free and sanity free) Botconocalypse

The Botconocalypse is upon me and I can't think or see straight but all I know is this has been the most concentrated dose of awesome old toy robot fun I have had in a long time. If you thought seeing some guy dressed as Snake-Eyes pretend fight some guy dressed as Deadpool in front of some guy dressed as a 500 foot tall Starscream was surreal, try doing it after being awake for 50 straight hours. I'm not even sure half the robot costumes I'm seeing are really there or not my brain is so fried.



ALL MY ROBOTS THAT WERE OUTSIDE, IN LIVING COLOR NOW ALIVE

What I am sure of is that Saturday I talked a lot at Rob and Brian's table while they were recording Radio Free Cybertron. We covered a wide range of subjects, including whether or not Cookie Monster t-shirts would look better if they had RFC logos ironed on top of them and that one time I met Bruce Dickinson. It is theorestically possible they may include my ramblings in their next podcast which may be up later on Sunday evening. It is also theoretically possible they were never there and I was talking to a bunch of Transformer bedsheets draped over a table.

BY ALL PODCASTS.......DESTROYED!!!!

Destroy All Podcasts episode 130 is a truly tech-spectacular rendezvous roboplastical as the battle hardened ruler of the Kingdom of Macrocrania is interviewed by the destroyer of all podcasts-the mighty Jeremy! I couldn't believe Jeremy asked me to be on DAPDX since I'm not sure hardcore toy robots fans would find me all that interesting, but I couldn't pass up the chance to sneak in lyrical references to Megadeth songs on his show. Listen in shock and amazement as we discuss old toy robots ad collecting in the most in-depth conversation I've ever had with anyone about the terrible toll roboplasticos have taken on my soul. Learn the terrible truth behind mysteries Macrocranian like why I think 'Please Save Me Robots' is a dumb name for a blog and also more than you probably ever wanted to know about the embarrassing medical condition that inspired my screen name.

Behold the Lunar Podcastalypse!

The never ending intergalactic robot war continues as the Kingdom of Macrocrania dispatches its mighty king to do battle against those who fight robots on the moon! Yes I'm talking about me dropping in on the Moon Masters episode 179! I explore various issues of ethics and technology with my podcast heroes Apoc D and Mick Aloha as we take a look at using podcasts to scam money off of anime fans, the legality of running a site full of 25 year old toy robots ads, why Amazon.com hates Antarctica and how I'm probably not cut out to be a motivational speaker.

My favorite Transformers podcast is not actually a Transformers podcast

I want to quickly mention that Greg and Rob over at the Paunch Stevenson show have been hitting it out of the park lately with the segments they've been doing on Transformers. They're not a dedicated Transformers-only podcast which means they have a different and I think fresher perspective than the other hardcore Transformer shows. I like to joke that what makes them different from Transformer podcasters is Greg and Rob actually like Transformers. Of recent shows I'd say episode 134 where they discuss Rhino's and Shout Factory's DVD releases and episode 137 where they slow down Unicron's lines from the 1986 movie are my favorites.

Robotardation without representation! OR: Talking not about my generation, but about what my generation's not talking about (and then getting them to)

This weekend I went to the library to look through newspapers from the butt end of the 1970s for old toy robots ads. Part of my pre-library preparation is finding podcasts to listen to that are related to the stuff I'm going to be researching but I knew in the back of my mind I wouldn't find much when I googled stuff like "Shogun Warriors podcast" and "Micronauts podcast" and "Microsexuals" hoping to find discussion about late 70s toys. The retro toy podcast conundrum is that the kids podcasting about toys today aren't old enough to be interested in talking about toys from before 1984, but the podcasters my age are mostly interested in talking about cooking or their babies or how movies today aren't as good as Star Wars was in 1977. To my surprise I did find one episode of a thirtysomethings-hosted podcast called TV Ate My Dinner where the topic included ROM and Shogun Warriors. It started out awesomely enough with the audio to ROM's commercial, but it didn't get very deep into the toys beyond talking about how "Spaceknight" would be a really cool thing to name a baby. Their toy episode may just be an aberration, though, because I've listened to some of their earlier podcasts and those have in-depth, well researched conversations on topics like surviving zombie attacks, the Smurf/communist conspiracy and how Harry Potter movies aren't as good as Star Wars was in 1977. It's kind of what I expected (and honestly kind of what I was hoping for).

COME WITH ME IF YOU WANT TO ROCK

I think if podcasts were around in the late 80s/early 90s then podcasters would have discussed Shogun Warriors, Micronauts and ROM the Spaceknight all the time (or at least as much as Transformers and Star Wars are podcasted about now). It's frustrating to me that nobody's done comprehensive, in depth podcasts about late seventies toy robots newspaper ads. This is the part where most people would transform their dissatisfaction into motivation to do their own super retro Shogun Warriors/Micronauts/ROM themed toy robots newspaper ads podcast. Not me, though. This is the part where I transform my dissatisfaction with podcasting into motivation to finish my time machine so I can send Adam Curry back to 1985 hoping he can invent podcasting twenty years earlier than he did. Displacing Adam Curry in time like a Terminator seems like a dangerous idea but I figure the worst case scenario is we end up living in an alternate reality where there's only one podcast ever-THE HEADBANGERS BALLCAST.

HI I'M STEVE AND THIS IS MY SON, GODZILLA MACROCRANIOS

There is another option if I want to make the podcast dimension I'm currently living in more Micronaughty with little to no effort on my part. I think I will search out podcasts run by people my age that are accepting topics suggestions and then I'm going to demand Shogun Warriors and Micronauts. I don't care if their podcasts are about cooking or naming babies. Worst case scenario is I end up getting a cooking podcast about making cakes shaped like Dire Wraiths or a show about which Shogun Warrior name is right for my baby. Pretty much the same situation I've got now, just more of it. It's kind of what I expected (and honestly kind of what I was hoping for).

LISTEN LIKE I GIVE YOU A GUNDAMN!

The Gundamn! podcast released the audio of their panel at Yasumicon which I mentioned attending a couple posts ago. During the audience Q&A portion I asked what would be the best way for human characters to interact with robots in Michael Bay movies and if watching Gundam conditions people to think humans should only be pilots and robots shouldn't think for themselves. At least that's what I intended to ask-it may have come out stupid. I haven't listened to it so maybe they edited me out.

The Unbearable Lightness of Cardboard Robot Beings

In my life there has been a disproportionate amount of me going to Botcon instead of other conventions so when I found out there was going to be a free anime convention called Yasumicon last weekend I went. Transformer content at anime conventions is usually pretty low so I go to them for different reasons, namely to learn about toy robots not from Cybertron and to check out all the people wearing crazy costumes. I look forward to a wide diversity of wacky outfits but I've been to a few anime conventions before and cosplayers disappointingly fall into two basic themes: a) jailbait Japanese cartoon character prostitute and b) Stormtrooper. Toy robots costumes are usually very rare. Any guy dressed as a robot is way outnumbered by 16 year old hooker Pokemons. This sucks for me because at 35 I'm getting too old to waste time being surrounded by people not dressed up as robots.



Thankfully Yasumicon wasn't just a bunch of Japanese lingerie maids and Boba Fett. It was a pretty good sized show and there were a couple guys dressed up as robots. The two standouts (for different reasons) were the guy who made that Gundam Heavyarms outfit I showed in the first picture (it had opening chest bays!) and another guy who wore a cardboard box and some ligtning bolts and called it at Zambot 3. Those two guys were pretty popular wherever they went. Toy robots fans were so hard up for old school robot costumes that you could probably have gotten laid if you duct taped a Playtation 3 to your chest, put a happy meal box on your head and called yourself Voltron.



The main reason I went to Yasumicon was because there were some robot related panels that appealed to me. The first one was held by the staff of the Gundamn! Podcast, which I had never heard of before. I've checked out their podcast since and they remind me of that Saturday Night Live "Schweddy Balls" skit. They have those NPR style voices but they talk about mecha anime. I thought the panel was great because for two hours they discussed Gundam and also the Transformers Revenge of the Fallen movie. They recorded the whole thing so it'll be up at their site and best of all is that I asked a couple of questions during the audience participation segments. Once they put that show up I'll link it here and you'll get to hear me ask if everybody hates Shia LeBouf because they watch too much Gundam (or something like that).



Then I went to a really great panel where this one guy talked about his experience being a fan of Gundam models while his wife sat in the corner and put one together. He's been modeling Gundams for over a decade and he had a lot of stories. The best ones to me revolved around the more robotarded aspects of Gundam model fandom, like the one about the guy who would buy $200 model kits and then put them together half-assedly and leave tons of sprue bits and flash on the parts. He also discussed the history of Gundam kits and he had some Revoltech figures on display like the YF-19 from Macross Plus, a Gurren Lagan and a black recolor of the King Gainer (which is pretty rare). He even had a model kit from the next Gundam cartoon which is going to be called "Gundam Unicorn". It's a white with pink highlights robot. When I saw it I was reminded of another Saturday Night live skit-the one Adam Sandler and Chris Farley did for "Schmitt's Gay" Beer.



The last panel I went to didn't even happen! It was called "Anime of the 80s" and I sat in a small classroom waiting for 30 minutes with 20 kids who I was old enough to be their dad. I must commend the youth of today on their patience because I tell you, if a bunch of us old guys sat for 30 minutes waiting for a panel to start at Botcon, chairs would be flying and it would be Lord of the Flies in no time. What ended up happening was the panel got hijacked when two young podcaster guys showed up and decided to take over. They tried to save the day by starting a conversation about 80s anime and amazingly it worked, if just for a short while. It seemed like I was the only guy there who was alive in the 80s so I ended up telling everyone what it was like watching old cartoons like Tranzor-Z, Transformers and Mighty Orbots. The concepts of VHF and UHF stations and changing the channel on my dad's old TV that had big circular knobs was foreign to most of the kids there. After a bit I started feeling self conscious and uncomfortable about how old I was. I went to that panel hoping to see someone else squirm uncomfortably about being an old toy robots cartoon weirdo! So I left because it was already past 10 pm on a Saturday night and I wanted to get back to my hotel before the Pokemon hookers got back on the streets.

I put up some more redundant convention pictures in my Yasumicon set at Flickr Macrocrania

NEW WEBOMIC-"The Witty Wickies" starring Sparky Wicky and his son Willy: Episode YOU CAN'T TAKE YOUR TOYS WITH YOU TO HELL

This episode inspired by episode 6.5 of Talking Toys with Aries0083.

TOMORROW ON THE WITTY WICKIES: THE EPIC CONCLUSION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

JUST SAY PAUNCH STEVENSON!

The Kingdom of Macrocrania continues extending its physical and political presence throughout the podcastosphere! The Paunch Stevenson Show episode 108 features me talking about my time in Air FOrce, Antractica and of course, roboplasticos.

JUST SAY ALOHA! OR:There is only one place on the internet you can hear me say "Galvatron in my butthole" while imitaing Meatwad

Check out my podcast guesting debut over at Mick Aloha Adventures! It's over an hour of me and Mick talking about why Boba Fett is overrated, why toy marketing can make me buy anything, and of course, roboplasticos. (It is unedited and uncut so cover your virgin ears. I think at one point I said I raped my own childhood.)

Some people have a face for radio-I have a voice for blogging

Greg and Rob from The Paunch Stevenson Show invited me to be their guest. I've never done that type of thing before so this will be a first for me. Their podcast is best described as a mix of topics from current pop culture to 80s/90s era nostalgia. It's not unusual for them to talk about Steven Segal's action movie career one minute and then Doctor Phil the next, all the while doing impressions of Louie Anderson. We're going to record tomorrow night and over the past few days I've been kinda nervous about the whole thing. Rob has assured me that the discussion we'll have will play to my strengths, which is cool but holy crap what if the conversation veers off a bit into areas I don't know about (which is pretty much everything except old newspaper ads of toy robots).

To soothe my anxiety I asked for advice from the only people in the world that I trust-my wife and The Moon Masters. My wife told me it's a good thing if I get the chance to talk outside of my established comfort zone about subjects that I may not be an expert in. But then she kind of just rolled over and went to bed without telling me why. The Moon Masters told me to just be myself and don't try to be funny or it'll come out sounding forced. So best case scenario would be I mesh well with Rob and Greg and we may have interesting discussions about video games or other such topics and worse case scenario would be I start doing Voltron episode reviews in a Louie Anderson voice.

Who needs time travel when you have plastic injection molding machines and 25 year old toy molds

There's this one antique store here in Rapid City that I like visiting because their definition of antique covers everything from early 1900's furniture to Harry Potter toothbrushes. They occasionally have stuff I'm into like old Star Wars and Robo Force and even Shogun Warriors figures. But I never in the three years I have lived here seen this or any other antique store with a single piece of Transformers merchandise. That was, until last week when to my amazement I found an Ultra Magnus soap dish on sale for $2. In other cities I've lived they have toy shows at least once a month and I'd usually laugh at something like this but here in Dakota del Sur, Ultra Magnus soap dish is equivalent to finding an Arby's on Cybertron. I thought that's about as lucky as I would ever get in terms of Transformers on the South Dakotan secondary market but boy was I in for a surprise when I went downstairs in the antique store.



There he was, the most wonderful super perfect robot Jesus that has ever lived, reduced to sharing shelfspace alongside a giant smurf, a piggy bank that was shaped like a headphone wearing pig and a ceramic cocker spaniel. Optimus Prime amongst the toy animals was like a pop culture consumerist (per)version of the baby Jesus being born in the manger. In my house Prime gets put up on the high shelves in the fancy glass cabinets with little spotlights shining down on Him in the center position amongst all the other toy robots worshiping Him as He deserves to be worshiped. So it struck me as odd that the antique store would not pay him the same reverence, even if this was only his Generation 2 incarnation. Still, it is Optimus Prime and if the antique store people had any flair for presentation they'd at least put him up on the shelf with the more respected antiques like the talking Mister T doll and the Empire Strikes Back drinking glasses from Burger King.

The antique store wanted twenty bucks for their G2 Prime and that would be great if it WASN'T missing everything except Roller and the sound box. If I saw this same thing at a garage sale I wouldn't pay over 12. I thought it was funny that even this inflated asking price was a bargain compared to what Hasbro expects people to pay when they re-release Optimus this Thanksgiving. At Botcon it was announced the 25th anniversary Optimus would have an MSRP of $69.99. It made me laugh because I remember getting irked when some podcaster guy reminisced incorrectly about Optimus Prime costing $60 back in the eighties. At first I thought he was an idiot, but now I realize that podcaster guy was a fuckin' prophet.

The 25th anniversary reissue comes with a DVD of the first three episodes of the old cartoon and a reprint of the first comic. In other words, recreations of all the things that started my life down the road to financial ruin and made me the robotarded societal outcast I am today. I get the feeling that Hasbro is waging some kind of war against me trying to get on with my life and be a productive contributing member of society. They may as well throw in a cassette copy of Iron Maiden's "Somewhere in Time" and an issue of Playboy from '88 and call it the "My wasted, wasted teenage years giftset".

Well it ain't gonna work this time. I am totally immune to their attempts to get me to rebuy yet again the most overhyped, overproduced overrated robot ever. I'm tired of the retreading this guy keeps getting, from the '93 G2 release to the '02 TRU rerelease to Pepsi Prime last year and all the multiple reissues this thing has gotten in Japan over the last 8 years. Doesn't it ever get old? I'm getting so tired of this that it's getting to the point that Optimus Prime is what I think about during sex to make it last longer. I should go to Wal-Mart and spray paint "BREAK OPEN IN CASE OF ERECTION" in big blocky Army letters on every last one of the damned things.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Autobots

"Optimus Prime's like, 'You motherfuckers know we're leaving but I still HAVE to TELL you Transform and Roll Out. I HAVE to tell you that.'"-Professor Bestestes

Starting at the 43:42 mark of Foreskin Radio episode 82, Dr. Lickalottapuss and Professor Bestestes get into a fascinating discussion about the leadership style of Optimus Prime and how that translates to management styles they've observed in their workplaces. Download the whole podcast and listen from that point on for about six minutes. It's awesome.